God (7 Days to Die)
As a concept, the Judeo-Christian God has been a recurring theme throughout the series, expressed primarily through running arguments between Aaron the amoral atheist and Emre the repressed zealot. Beings calling themselves "God" have even appeared on two separate occasions, but the veracity of these manifestations is dubious at best. Jub, a godlike manifestation of the Multiverse imprinted with JWM's personality, claims that God does not exist (only a false god it calls the Demiurge), but Jub's rantings reveal that it cannot perceive any planes of existence (such as Heaven or Hell) beyond itself. No being that can be unambiguously identified as the "true" God has ever appeared in the series. God's true nature, including whether or not God exists at all, has never been addressed. God & Jesus (According to Emre) As a former Sunday School teacher and warped religious zealot, Emre lectures Aaron about God and Jesus frequently throughout the series. Over time, Emre paints a clear picture of his idea of the Christian God, albeit one clearly based on disjointed snippets of Biblical scripture, half-remembered episodes of VeggieTales, lessons learned during a seemingly abusive Texan upbringing, and pure fabrications invented on the spot to support his arguments. See Recurring Themes (The Gospel According to Emre) for each season for details of Emre's various, sometimes contradictory claims. God: Emre imagines God as the manliest man of all time, with a long beard; huge, hairy hands; and a tattoo. He rides a chopper. (Emre does not disagree with Aaron supposition that his God is a white dude with white hair.) God is opposed to most premarital sex, but, as with Noah after the Flood, one man having sex with multiple women is fine in order to repopulate the human race. (Such a man still mustn't marry those women, however, as taking multiple wives is forbidden.) Emre's God is profoundly opposed to all non-heterosexual sex and marriage; a child raised by two dudes would become the spawn of Satan, and Emre's pretty sure that Aaron's pie-banging is why they've been condemned to Purgatory. God is omniscient and interventionist; life is predestined. God created every sport, and He knows (and bets on) the outcome of every game ever played. Shockingly (though admittedly, during a crisis of faith), Emre also claims that God is a narcissist who really just wants credit for everything He's done and used ghostwriters (possibly the Holy Ghost) to pen the Bible. Jesus: Jesus, who lived 4,625 years ago (coexisting with cavemen, mammoths, and dinosaurs) was a good-old-boy and a warrior''.'' Jesus loved puns and shotguns; he was known as the King of Puns. He had an apostle, Jeffrey, who threw water balloons at Him, so Jesus bitch-slapped his ass. Jesus knew that sometimes, you need to appreciate the things you have, and not just give it all to the poor and needy. Jesus died for the sins of everyone but Aaron; in Aaron's case, He died for his stupidity. After the Resurrection, Jesus fucked everyone's shit up, and He wielded a spiked baseball bat (created with the same nails used to affix Him to the cross) to smite zombies. Jesus rides a celestial war elephant in the Mega-Heaven Wars. Jesus forgives, but his celestial elephant never forgets. The Holy Ghost: God takes credit for writing the Bible, but He actually had ghostwriters. While it's technically Aaron who suggests that the Bible was ghostwritten by the Holy Ghost, Emre doesn't deny it. Satan/The Devil: Emre has had relatively little to say about Satan, but does credit him with running McDonald's and founding the Democratic Party. The Devil always comes from the north, which is why he went "down" to Georgia. Neither God, Jesus, nor Satan have ever appeared in the series (but see the Oakpocalypse God, below). Notable References * Season 1: Jesus smote the zombies (Episode 3 -Baseball Bat Jesus); The apostle Jeffrey (Episode 5 - Zombies of the Corn); God, the manliest man of all time (Episode 10 - Cabin in the Wood) * Season 2: Satan runs McDonald's (Episode 25 - Undead Pool Party); Jesus would friend Emre on Facebook (Episode 28 - Roof Nips); Jesus says to appreciate your stuff (Episode 37 - Suicide Pit) * Season 3: Jesus fucked people's shit up (Episode 68 - Fort Titanic); Communion isn't all that different from cannibalism (Episode 69 - Fort F*ckers) * Season 4: Jesus, King of Puns (Episode 74 - Level 5 Creeper); God bets on sports (Episode 81 - Leather Dancer) * Season 6: Aaron and Emre picture Emre's "Chopper God" to pass the time while Emre demolishes Fort George. (Episode 118 - Enter the Void) * Season 7: Jesus rides a celestial war elephant in the Mega-Heaven Wars (Episode 120 - Toxic Sermon) * Season 10: God's a narcissist and the Bible was ghostwritten (Episode 184 - God's a Narcissist); the Devil is from the north (Episode 186 - Devito Tower) The Voice At the conclusion of Season 4, a malevolent, unseen entity (hereby referred to as "the Voice" for lack of any clear identification) suddenly proclaims its presence. It insults and torments Aaron and Emre, eventually summoning minions to destroy their base, and seemingly even has the power to distort time and tear open rifts into the Void. The Voice is played by Adam Koralik. The Voice's minions are all played by fans (Subbable patrons at the time). Story Aaron and Emre potentially foreshadow the appearance of "God" in Episode 81 (Leather Dancer), when Aaron beholds the majesty of his creation, the open-air Ultra-Heaven fort, and declares it a masterpiece of design and his own cleverness. When Aaron compares its splendor to the Tower of Babel, Emre assures him that God will strike him down for his cockiness. In Episode 83 (Conversation With God), following an uneventful Day 7 horde (and two nights in which time has inexplicably sped up without notice), a booming voice, seemingly coming from the sky, suddenly interrupts Aaron and Emre's shenanigans. Emre immediately assumes the Voice is God, but the Voice simply states that "it should be really obvious who I am by now." When a supply plane flies overhead seconds later, Emre asks the Voice if it sent the plane, but the Voice just tells him to shut up. Aaron neither believes the Voice is God nor that the simultaneous appearance of the plane is a coincidence; he insists the Voice is "some dude with a megaphone." Emre prays to "God," offering to kill Aaron for him; the Voice says Emre can punch Aaron if he wants. Aaron still insists they're being conned. When Emre asks if he should go get the supply crate the Voice just "dropped," the Voice dismissively tells him to go do what he's gotta do, then shifts to its main concern: "You guys have been pissing me off for a while now. Are you aware of that?" The Voice proceeds to berate, insult, and eventually attack Aaron and Emre. It deflects their theories about who or what it is, sometimes making contradictory claims itself, seemingly to sow confusion. The Voice dislikes both Aaron and Emre, but makes it very clear that it particularly hates Aaron. The Voice found Emre's attack on Grace amusing, but considers him a kiss-ass. On the other hand, the Voice is deeply offended by Aaron's pie-fucking. What is the Voice? It explains only that it works in mysterious ways. Aaron quickly latches onto the theory that the Voice is just the "sick dude" responsible for the maddening supply planes, using a hidden megaphone or boom box (or perhaps speakers in their helmets, as Emre supposes) to project his voice. The Voice neither confirms nor denies a connection to the supply planes, instead simply asking Aaron to consider how those planes get into the air in the first place - a question that provides no answers. Meanwhile, Emre is initially certain that the Voice is God, come to save him, but he later slips in and out of doubt. At one point, the Voice claims to be neither God nor Satan (and very specifically denies being Emre's version of God), but later says it's both God and Satan. As with Aaron's supply plane prankster theory, the Voice offers no real answers. He grovels before "God," offering to kill Aaron to appease it. The Voice finds this amusing, but tells Emre it doesn't want him to kill Aaron, just to hurt him. Later, after explaining that it has cursed Aaron and Emre with immortality, the Voice claims that if Emre can find a way to successfully, permanently murder Aaron, Emre will ascend directly into Heaven. Later, after the Voice has unleashed its Santa hat-wearing "spawn" and the world is going mad around them, Aaron begins to wonder if the Voice might not be Santa Claus himself. The Voice claims to be all-seeing and demonstrates extensive knowledge of Aaron and Emre's respective pasts. It claims to have seen Emre beating Grace, and was unable to not see Aaron fucking blueberry pies. The Voice claims to have intervened in their past, not just with its claim to have cursed them with immortality, but more specifically by trying to save Emre from Aaron's Thanksgiving pie-fucking (Episode 49 - Thanksgiving Surprise) by sending him to the "forbidden zone" in the tunnels beneath the Ho Motel. The Voice also passes Emre's test of successfully answering a question only Emre himself could possibly know - whether Emre has ever had a homosexual thought toward Aaron - but the Voice's "Yes" could well have just been a perceptive guess. Whatever the Voice's true nature might be, it is far from benevolent, insisting that it has made Aaron and Emre immortal like "shitty Highlanders" - able to be infinitely hurt and killed, always to return to life - so their suffering can go on and on. The Voice's powers also appear to be quite extensive - perhaps even quasi-divine. The Voice summons an army of what it calls "Hellspawn" minions. These Hellspawn look like human survivors - some naked, some wearing armor, all wearing Santa hats - but they do not speak and can be seen sliding on the ground or even jumping back up on their feet after being killed. As if that weren't bad enough, the Voice adds to the terror by unleashing temporal distortions during the battle, causing linear time to fracture and rifts into the Void to rip open. (In truth, the Voice acknowledges that these powers are the effects of extreme lag in the game.) After a futile attempt to defend themselves, Aaron and Emre give up. Emre throws himself into a Void rift, and Aaron - trapped in a vicious cycle of constant death and respawning - simply stares up at the sky, hoping to be reunited with Emre in the afterlife. After Aaron and Emre have been vanquished and their base Ultra-Heaven totally destroyed, the Voice declares that it may one day bring them back so their torment can continue. When Aaron and Emre find themselves lost in a new world, they quickly convince themselves that the Voice was just some weirdo who created the encounter with hallucinogenic drugs and speakers mounted on a remote-controlled drone. Aaron is particularly certain that the Voice belonged to whomever is in charge of the supply planes, who is plainly just out to mess with them. Later, Emre calls the Voice a "false deity" and decides that if it was against pie-fucking, then he's for it. Much later, when a permanent rift into the Void opens next to Georgie Porgie Pudding and Fort, Aaron develops a belief that the rift may lead to the realm of the Lovecraftian Old Ones. He revises his stance that the Voice belonged to whomever run the supply planes, and suggests instead that the "God" who attack them might have been a servant of the Old Ones. Emre suggests Nyarlothotep, "herald of the ancient evils." Quotes * Emre: "We understand that you are Jesus Christ our lord and savior, and you are finally here to bring me to Heaven and rid me of this heathen." The Voice: "All right, calm down, kiss ass." Aaron: "(laughs) You're - you're a god, kiss-ass!" The Voice: "Can you shut up, pie fucker?" Aaron: "Pie fucker?!? How do - how do you know that?!? How do you fucking know that?" Emre: "Ha! Yeah!" The Voice: "Do you realize how much that pissed me off? When I saw you fuck a pie?" Emre: "I told him not to do that. I told him." The Voice: "I know! I saw that, and I appreciate that." (Episode 83 - Conversation With God) * (On Aaron's theory that the supply plane people are vindictive assholes) The Voice: "Would be convenient, wouldn't it? " Aaron: "Yeah." The Voice: "Almost like it would make sense. But what if it didn't make sense? What if you guys did die on a regular basis and kept coming back, with no explanation." Emre: "God, get to the point." The Voice: "I'm not sure I have a point. I just hate you guys." (Episode 83 - Conversation With God) * The Voice: "Go forth, my spawn! Destroy them! Punish them! Yes, suffer! Die! Feel my wrath! Watch as I make the whole world operate more slowly! Watch me bring screen-tearing and rubber-banding and lag to the land! (evil laughter)" (Episode 83 - Conversation With God) * The Voice: "And so, it was on this great day I brought about my minions to destroy the two dipshits known as Aaron and Emre. To bring pain to them for all of their transgressions against me and all of humanity. Perhaps, if I feel up to it, I will bring them back, just to watch them suffer and weep once more." (Episode 83 - Conversation With God) Episodes * Season 4: A voice torments Aaron and Emre and destroys Ultra-Heaven. (Episode 83 - Conversation With God) Notable References * Season 5: When Aaron and Emre find themselves in a new world, they immediately reject the Voice's claim that it controls their lives. Aaron convinces himself that "God" was just a weirdo with a drone who drugged them (Episode 84 - Strange New World). The Voice's actions have turned Emre toward pie-fucking (Episode 90 - Pie Bangers). * Season 6: Aaron proposes that "God" may have been a servant of the Old Ones trapping them in Hell. (Episode 111 - Machete Massacre) The Oakpocalypse God (Hallucination) While in the Evilverse, Emre encountered a vision of God that told him he was the Second Coming of Christ, and that together, they would sire the Third Coming before ascending into Heaven. Unfortunately for Emre, this version of God was entirely the product of his own imagination, the product of hallucinogenic spores released by the Once and Future Aaron's mutant trees. The Oakpocalypse God is voiced by Emre Cihangir. Episodes * Season 9: Exposure to hallucinogenic pollen causes Emre to experience a vivid hallucination of his personal concept of God. (Episode 163 - Emre Meets God) The Demiurge In the (real-world) Gnostic belief system, the Demiurge is a false god and master of the material world, a being that conceals the higher truths of reality from mortal understanding. In Season 8, JWM tells Emre that he raised Gnostic by his college professor mother and mentions the Demiurge in reference to those beliefs. In Season 9, Arch-Paladin Jub mentions the Demiurge again, claiming that it (along with the Void and the Chaos Beasts) is one of the only things that is actually real, unlike God, Heaven, Hell, and everything else in existence. While Jub presents itself as an omniscient avatar of the Multiverse itself, its personality is plainly based on JWM's warped mind, and so Jub may have simply inherited JWM's belief in the Demiurge. Regardless, Emre generally ignores JWM and Jub's ramblings on the topic. The Demiurge never appears in the series, and the question of its existence is left entirely unknown. See Also Category:7 Days to Die Category:7 Days Lore